New York, March 26, 2015--The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the welfare of Omani blogger Muawiyah Alrawahi, who was detained while attempting to enter the United Arab Emirates by car from Oman. Alrawahi, who has criticized Omani authorities on his blog and YouTube channel, has long been persecuted for his work, according to news reports and local and international human rights groups.

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The Emirati authorities released the
Egyptian journalist Anas Fouda on August 4, 2013, after holding him incommunicado
without charge for a month, the journalist told CPJ. Security officials told
Fouda that his UAE residency was revoked and took him to the Abu Dhabi
International Airport, where he flew to Cairo to join his family, Fouda said.

New York, August 1, 2013--The Committee to
Protect Journalists calls for the immediate release of Egyptian journalist Anas
Fouda, who has been held without charge by the United Arab Emirates authorities
for almost a month.

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Lohini Rathimohan, a former television journalist from Sri
Lanka, faces an unclear future. The 28-year-old is among 15 Tamil
refugees still sheltered in a single room of an aluminum factory at Dubai's
Jebel Ali port whose official statuses remain uncertain.

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A short note to follow up on an alert we posted Wednesday on
the threatened deportation of Lohini
Rathimohan (also spelled Lokini), a
former television journalist and one of 19 Tamil refugees facing deportation
from the United Arab Emirates. Earlier reports said the refugees, who
reached Dubai illegally, could be deported this week.

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New York, April 10, 2013--The Committee to Protect
Journalists is deeply concerned by news reports that a Tamil journalist in the
United Arab Emirates may be deported to Sri Lanka this week despite her United
Nations refugee status, and calls on authorities in the UAE to halt any such
deportation measures.

In the past month,
officials in both the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have prevented journalists
from reporting on important court proceedings. But it is not too late to allow
the press to cover these crucial cases.

A Gay Girl in Damascus was a personal blog, said to be written by a young woman named Amina Arraf, that appeared to give an everyday record of being a lesbian in modern-day Syria. Following the events of the Arab Spring, as the political situation in Syria grew less stable, the blog attracted more readers and media coverage. Its compelling descriptions of Syrian life gave many a way to connect emotionally to a distant crisis. On June 6, the author's "cousin" wrote that the blogger had been seized by the security services.

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New York, June 14, 2011--Today's trial of prominent political blogger Ahmad Mansoor and four others
for alleged insult of authorities, criticism and undermining of the government
in relation to the their online writings and activism represents a further
setback for press freedom in the United Arab Emirates, the Committee to Protect
Journalists said today.

New York,
April 11, 2011--Continuing a weeks-long pattern of seizing journalists covering
the Libyan conflict, the government of Muammar Qaddafi is detaining two more
television journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. And in
Egypt, in a serious setback for press freedom under the transitional government,
a court has sentenced a blogger to a three-year prison term for "insulting the
military."